Ancient footprints found in England are at least 800,000 years old

A few people went for a stroll in the English countryside about a million years ago, and now scientists have uncovered their footprints, preserved all this time in layers of sand. The discovery was made after tides exposed an ancient river bank last year on England’s east coast. Early estimates place the age of the footprints at 800,000 to 1 million years old.

The footprints appear to be those of two children and at least one male adult. The river bank they were walking on may have been the ancient Thames, according to researchers studying the geology of the area. The layers of rock the prints were found in were used to make the estimate of age — they have been geologically linked with nearby fossils of mammoths and ancient European horses.

The age of these footprints is interesting because they could be at least 100,000 years older than the previously accepted date for the first human habitation of the British Isles. However, this doesn’t mean Homo sapiens was wandering around on the banks of the ancient Thames. Scientists believe the prints could belong to a different human species called Homo antecessor, now long since extinct.

After being discovered, the footprints were photographed, scanned, and analyzed to pick out the details. Even the arches of the feet and individual toes are visible in these well-preserved prints. The prints themselves didn’t last long — two weeks after being discovered, the tides had washed them away completely. The find still raises the hopes of archaeologists that fossil evidence of Homo antecessor habitation will be found in the area.